Badge used on the spindle belt guard cover on all ML7 lathes

1947 - and the Myford publicity department produced this sectional drawing. For a very high-resolution download (39MB) that you can copy to an pen-drive and have printed out in colour on an A2 sheet by your local graphics shop, click on the picture or here (be patient, it takes time…)

An unused ML7, found in its crate during 2012. The original paint having deteriorated in storage, the owner repainted in Myford colours. The only non-original point is that the Myford name on the headstock would have been picked out in cream paint. Are the oilers original? They might be replacements for the ones normally supplied by "Adams Lube Tech"

Carriage assembly clearly showing the extended bridge casting on the end of the cross slide that gave a useful increase in travel; this was of special benefit when using a vertical milling slide. The micrometer dial fitted is the later machined and engraved type.

ML7 bed numbers started at 1001, so this is the 183-third. machine made. The number can be found stamped at the tailstock-end of the bed, on the rear vertical shear. If a letter "R" is present, this indicated a bed that has been reground at the Myford factory

Countershaft drive unit from a very early ML7.
The cut-out sections in the upright were filled in on later models and the full length hinge pin through the base of the motor platform changed to two short studs.

Rodney Vertical Milling attachment. Clamped to the bed, the drive was taken to the miller from a No. 2 Morse taper plug in the headstock via. a flexible coupling. A drilling quill and fine down-feed were fitted and the nose of the miller was fitted with a standard Myford spindle nose thread. A smaller, simpler version was also produced without the quick-action drill feed.

An ML7 converted for production work and fitted with a lever-operated collet chuck, cross slide mounted turret attachment and a cut-off slide. Visible just behind the bed is the top part of a multi-stop unit, used to provide a dead-length stop to the saddle movement. Besides the items illustrated, a much larger bed-mounted capstan unit was available with built-in stops and auto indexing. Some lathes were sold ready converted for production work with the screwcutting gear, compound slides and tailstock removed - and sometimes fitted with the Tri-Leva spindle speed selector and a two-speed motor.

Myford C7 Capstan. An early standard-production version (identifiable by the screw-feed cut-off slide) fitted with a Tri-leva spindle speed selector, standard bed-mounted capstan head, coolant unit and two-speed electric motor.

Branded as a MI-BO (cast into the front face of the headstock) this Italian-made Minganti Myford ML7 copy was discovered in Canada (unlike the better-known Taiwanese copies, one has yet to be found in the United Kingdom). At a guess it would have been made in the early 1960s, the use of the earlier "open" tailstock casting but inclusion of Super 7-like cross and top-slide handles being the clues. However, perhaps the makers had to hand an earlier example of the original ML7, the micrometer dials are of the MAKAK type, the headstock bearing are lubricated through turn-to-open wick-feed oil caps, ball-spring oilers are in evidence on slideways, tailstock and leadscrew hanger bearings and an early type curved leadscrew guard is fitted .
Minganti appear to have produced not only a very high-quality copy with smooth castings and fine detailing but, by using a double-step pulley on the motor to countershaft drive, one with 12 speeds running from 32 to 1200 r.p.m instead of the original rather slow 6 that spanned a rather slow 35 to 640). It might be that the headstock bearings were also improved with the use of bronze instead of white metal - a solution for higher speeds that was offered in later years by Myford as a replacement assembly.
If you have a Minganti-Myford the writer would be interested to hear from you
A translation from an Italian web site:
"Minganti Joseph , one of the pioneers of the Italian machine tools, was formed in his father working abroad. In 1919 he began to produce their own letter-book presses, moulds for containers cachet and a small drill press . Within a few years the business grew and moved the shop in Via della Fontanina to a new factory in Via Ferrarese .
He was always beside his wife Gilberte Gabrielli , who took charge of the organizational and accounting side of the business. At the Paris Exposition of 1928 Minganti presented the first lathe with hydraulic control and continuously variable speeds , the patents taken out giving him international fame. Then came other machine tools including drills and milling machines, as well as a number of special machines for the packing of cigarettes and production of bearings, wire mesh and, pistons. In 1936 , during the period when Italy tried to become self-sufficient in industrial production, the Company manufactured turret (capstan) lathes - models that proved to be of excellent quality and the equal of foreign ones .
During the WW2, in 1943, the factory was hit hard by a bombing raid and subsequently the German command decided to confiscate the factory's machine tools and transport them in Germany, but Minganti fought the request to obtain the transfer of the machinery and of its engineers to Palazzolo .
When her husband died during the difficult process of reconstruction and in the following decades , it was the wife Gilberte to lead the Company with intelligence and determination, qualities that were recognized with her appointment in 1964, as the first woman in Italy to be awarded the Knight of Merit of Labour.
The company moved in the early sixties in a modern industrial complex, in Via Ferrarese, and contto successfully produce machine tools, precision grinding machines, vertical lathes and automatic."
 http://www.comune.bologna.it/memoriabologna/servizi/107:7100/7109/